Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Sex & Aging: Navigating Sex and Relationships in Later Life

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

In this episode of "Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex with Dr. Sue & Charlie," we invite listeners to a candid, compassionate conversation about sex and aging - an essential discussion for everyone at every stage of life.  Together, they explore the changing perception of aging and how media shapes our views on what it means to grow older, especially when it comes to love and intimacy. Dr. Sue discusses how societal pressures around youthfulness affect both men and women as they age, and why diverse, authentic representation of aging in media can impact our sense of self. They also address the rising rates of STIs among older adults, unpacking the biases in healthcare that often leave this demographic without the education and support they need to maintain their sexual health. Dr. Sue and Charlie touch on the role of adult children in supporting aging parents who are re-entering the dating scene. They discuss the importance of being open, supportive, and nonjudgmental, as well as how adult children can help their parents navigate new relationships and online dating safely.   If you have a topic or question for the podcast please submit your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions If you want to ask Dr Sue a sex question for the weekly Q&A you can submit it here: Ask a question

Hey everyone, welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to dive into the topics of sex and sexuality that you might be curious about, but don't always feel comfortable talking about. No judgment, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Today's episode is going to be focused on sex and aging. But before we dive into that, Dr. Sue, would you tell our listeners a little bit about your background? Sure. So I'm Dr. Sue. I am a sexuality educator. I am an author. I'm a speaker. and for about 10-15 years ago I really started diving into this world of sex and aging I

had a little bias when I was approached by an organization to do a topic to do a presentation on sex and aging and I'm like I don't think I know everything which was horribly biased and the more I dove into it the more I realized we don't often talk about this so I've done a lot of work since then expanding the education I do from you know mid-teens to I think my oldest person was 87 in the audience once so really starting to have those conversations across the lifespan because we so often forget to do that and then joining here joining me here today is Charlie. Charlie is our curious co-host who is ready to explore the ins and outs of sex relationships and all those taboo topics we rarely talk about and also Charlie doesn't sound

a little bit like herself today. So if you want to tell us a little bit about your voice, but also a little bit more about your background. Yeah. So just real quick, everyone, I am getting over a cold. So that is the reason for the difference in how I may sound during this episode. Bear with me. And then just a little bit about me and how I got into this space with Dr. sue we've been friends for many many years and we uh we have conversations about a variety of topics nothing is too taboo for us to talk about together and so we thought um by the virtue of the work that dr sue does and the kind of conversations that we have we thought we would bring it to the podcast world to make it accessible to anybody who as i said at the top of the show

might be curious about but too shy to talk about so let's dive in shall we yeah let's talk about the drum roll i know and so the sex and aging piece for us came up from the last episode that we did um which was about kind of pop media and culture and what it says is except oh air quotes i feel like we should have a noise when i do air quotes um because there's so many of them but when we were talking about kind of what's normal and acceptable when it comes to sex on on in tv and movies and music and everything that one of the one of the things we always see is it's for the younger generations but not too young because because we don't want people being sexually active when they're too young not that we define that and i'm sure now we'll do an episode on that

but one of the things that came out of it is this idea that if you're aging or you're older you have zero representation well minuscule representation because i'm sure someone will be like but what about this character yeah what about this movie right so there's very little representation of older folks in the mass media and so we want and this is also a topic we very rarely talk about um and like i said i was i was approached to do a presentation about this and i didn't realize how little conversation we have with this population and how little we talk to the people who serve this population, social workers, administrators, healthcare workers. So we decided it was time to kind of have this conversation. Yeah. Caretakers.

yes yeah so i am i think to to add on to that we wanted to make sure that we made this up that we make it understood that this episode really we're kind of focusing on middle age and older and the impacts on that which i will not define middle age and older i did that once and someone threatened to throw something at me because ARP when they do their studies and because they used to do this great study of midlife the sex lives and midlife midlife Americans and older and they define midlife as 45 and I was doing a session on aging and I pointed that out and someone who was 46 took took took some umbrage to that fact I'm like it's not my number um but but generally when we're talking middle life and older we are talking about 45 and and 45 all the

way up. Yeah. So where shall we start Dr. Sue with sex and aging? I feel like we, we do need to talk a little bit about mass media only because that's so fresh for us coming off that last episode, which is a hint. If you haven't watched, listen to the last episode. Um, but I do this thing in my class where we talk about sex and aging and we talk about the imagery. And for a very long time we were more accepting of men looking older you talk about you think about the Sean Connery's um and now no one else came to mind though I know short Clooney thank um but you think about these older people who are either going gray or going bald and had the wrinkles and it was it was more acceptable but when you looked at women women were either not cast later

on in their lifespan, or they were expected to look like they were younger. And that's been happening to women for decades, probably since the advent of movies. If they wanted to be seen as a main character or a sexy character, then they had to have few if no wrinkles. Their hair could not be gray. They had to still maintain that young image. And now we're seeing that changing for men. I remember one of my students going, hey, isn't this great? It's a quality. I'm like, this is not what I this is not what I want. This is not the equality I wanted. But if you take a look at some of the men who are over 50, I'm thinking about the Robert Downey juniors. They they don't look like they're over 50. And so we don't now we're seeing the same pressure being put on the men to look younger. And we're not going to dive into the whole unless you want to dive into the psychology of why of why that happens. No. Okay. But what it does is for the person sitting at home who's watching this, if you're older and you don't see yourself represented, and this goes actually with anything, race, ability and disability, if you don't see yourself represented, you don't feel like you're a part of that world. You don't feel like you have a place. You feel like you've been written out. And so for folks who are getting older, they don't see themselves and that can really make them, that can really impact how they see their lives and their relationships and whether or not they should be having sex lives and new relationships.

Yeah. To echo that, when you don't see yourself in certain lights represented in certain ways or what have you, it can subconsciously make you withdraw from those activities or the socialization piece or whatever. If you constantly in a movie or a TV show see a cantankerous older person, senior citizen, then you kind of adopt that – you can adopt that personality trait, right? And it normalizes your lack of existence to everybody else. So I know one of the things we're going to jump into is how horrible adult children are when older folks try to – or I hope we're going to get to that. But before we do, so I've done sex and aging events for people of all genders or I've done a gender specific because some of how our bodies change is the same for everybody. But some of it really is specific to your gender. And I was doing an event just for women on aging. And we were talking about what it means to be sexy when you're older.

and this woman who was solid gray hair and i know that's like a trend now is to have the gray hair even for younger folks this was before the trend she'd gone to her hairdresser and hairdresser's like well you're older your hair just needs to be short and and yeah and she see it's when you make faces like that it's when i wish we had video i i twitched everyone i had a facial twitch um but but the the care it was just in this hairdresser's idea that she didn't that that she shouldn't have long hair because she was older so she needed automatically needed a golden girl's haircut yes yeah and then the problem was you know a lot of times when when people go to the hairdresser they bring pictures of what they want so she's like okay i'm gonna i'm gonna find a

picture of someone who has the hair that i want she couldn't find any yeah and so it had it's it's not just for the person but it's also everyone who's interacting with that person um and and there is a danger when we don't have those those images we don't really have post-menopausal women in media who look post-menopausal and so that that changes that limits what we see as sexy across the board now everyone can have their their own definition that's not impacted by mass media but mass media has an impact but it it also impacts how partners are looking at you so if part if partners are just being bombarded with this idea of like women should always look this way which is unachievable for most women um but they don't see what it means to be sexy and aging

then they're going to assume that female partners should also look like that and it's it's sometimes that's a standard that can't be met and it's very frustrating for people yes and i think the other thing is that when it makes headlines when a woman and uh you know i'll take because she's there right now in in this moment pamela anderson has decided to go makeup free at events and the the waves that that made. And she is unapologetically doing it, which I love. That's amazing, especially given her career. There are so many people that have had that kind of career that continue to try and hold on to that image they have of themselves in that moment in time. And so the fact that it makes headlines when especially women say, you know

what no I don't subscribe to it anymore and I'm still just as beautiful and sexy and feel myself yeah you know that's that's the that's the interesting thing to me um so I feel like that is also to echo your what you just talked about it's the implicit messaging that we get and the conditioning that we get when we see um you know something on on buzzfeed um where it's like when we see something on pop culture media where they're like celebrities who are above 50 or whatever and you see you see this you scroll through these pictures of these women who have access to a whole host of treatments and doctors and diets and things like that but it is that implicit message that this is the standard at this age and that's not helpful no and it doesn't

help the the it doesn't help the people who don't see themselves reflected it doesn't help the partners it doesn't help their family members it doesn't help health care professionals i mean it just sets this idea that that's not we don't we don't expect people to age and and i again i used to say women only and it's not we're doing it to the men now as well um i had this real heartbreaking moment I was I was doing a thing on on aging for women and this woman came up to me she had just run a sprint triathlon or just done a sprint triathlon the day before so a sprint triathlon is just kind of a shorter triathlon but still like yeah all the pieces major yeah and she completed it which I mean I can't run a mile unless someone's chasing me so the idea of

like running and then biking and cycling and and she just she she came up to me after the presentation and she said i just i look in this mirror and i just see this old woman looking back at me and she couldn't see what i was seeing which was like this athlete you know she's in her 70s and she's this athlete and she's doing these things that most people can't do because she was just so tied into that look piece she couldn't see the functionality of of what of what she was doing it was heartbreaking and i mean that story's been following me in my in my brain for for years now um but there's a couple places i want to take this if that's okay with you yes please so from the sexual health perspective because i do so i know i don't usually list my degrees at the

beginning but um i have a bachelor's and a master's in health education so i was a health educator before i was anything else and then i have a phd in human sexuality education which is kind of when i moved from health educator to sex educator officially i've been doing it for years but But anyway, from a health perspective, one of the things that we're finding is that doctors are assuming that people past a certain, some doctors, I don't want to say all, there are some really great doctors out there. But some healthcare professionals are assuming that folks who are older are not sexually active. And so they're not talking to them about things like safer sex. Now, yes, if you're a postmenopausal woman, you can't get pregnant. But if you're a

man having sex with a woman who's still before menopause and you still do need to worry about pregnancy prevention um and we definitely are not talking this population about safer sex in terms of sti rates which plug for ourselves to go listen to the episode on stis um and when you take a look at the numbers i mean i i know i don't usually do numbers but i feel like i want to bring this up Because when we take a look at like the last three or so years of numbers. Hold on. I don't want to follow. I don't want to finish that thought for one second. And the reason why is that when I say going back three years, we're going right into the middle of the pandemic and people were not usually STI testing because most clinics were closing. And so it looked like STI rates were going down in 2020, which was absolutely not true. It's just we weren't testing. And what we kept saying was like, hey, folks, don't worry, the numbers are going to catch up to us. But this is for everyone. So I want to put that caveat in when I say that the numbers have been going up in three years. I also know it's because we're finally getting accurate numbers as the world reopened. But the numbers that I was looking at were saying that in three years, so from 2020 to 2023, the rates of STIs in the United States for the entire population went up by about 5%. But for people 65 and over, it went up over 23%.

So this is a population that's obviously sexually active, is not using condoms, whether it's internal or external condoms, for whatever reason. And I think part of that is their doctors aren't having those conversations with them. They don't think that there's a need. They don't think that they're at risk. And that's not going to change until we either do education for that population. And by the way, England did great with this. They did a whole campaign about STIs in older folks. We're not doing it here in the U.S.

And we're not doing it at the individual level with our health care providers. And I don't know if it's that bias of like, oh, older people don't have sex. But your patients are. And now they're struggling with the after effects of it. Yeah. And to that point that we were making earlier, when you don't see yourself represented in certain spaces, you're not going to feel comfortable self-advocating. Absolutely. And that generation, that 70s and 80s generation, it's a lot different from the generations we see coming up that are like, well, no, healthcare provider, I would like a second opinion. or, wait, I have my own questions, that population tends to, not everyone, tends to just kind of take what the doctors are saying is gospel and they don't question it. And so for a lot of people

who are in their 70s and 80s, if their doctor isn't asking about their sex lives, asking if they're engaging with new partners, asking if they have any questions about STIs, asking about like condoms they're not going to get the information they need and they you can't ask about the things you don't even know you should be asking about so okay if i'm on my 70s and i don't realize i'm at risk i'm not even going to ask it and then my doctor's not bringing it up and so if my doctor is not bringing it up then i must not be at risk or it might not i'm i don't have to worry about it right right and then and if you have a doctor who has maybe you're in an area where there's, you know, not to stereotype small towns, but if you have a small, if you live

in a small town and you have like a handful of doctors serving the population, working through the bias of the doctor, you know, that's a level that you have to work through on top of working through your own levels to vocalize your questions, your needs, your concerns. And that bias. And I think that's, I'm so happy you brought that up. That bias is not limited to older folks in some of the smaller towns um and it is probably something we should talk about at some point but if i mean if you were if you were seen as kind of the older you know the nice older person in the neighborhood and it's a small town and people are going to find out that you're at the doctor because it burns when you pee um and we would like to think that information is protected

but we all know how things can get you know how rumors get spread so yeah it can become an issue i'm not sure if i told this story before on another episode so i'm gonna to tell you about the woman who was dating in her late 60s and i don't think so oh yeah so i was i was doing a live event where we were talking i feel like i should clarify i i feel like i've used that term before live events are like presentations um where people ask me to come in and speak yeah i'm always a little afraid when i say live event with sex what people think we're doing that's a demonstration not demonstrations even when we're doing but so i do like everything from bar trivia to like talking to health care professionals to talking to community groups like

but that's what we mean by live events um i was doing a live event and i was i had a woman she was in her late 60s i don't always ask their age because like a lot of times i don't want that being the factor like oh well how old are you but um this was really marketed to people 65 and older and so i'd say she was in her late 60s early 70s she had lost her partner to death and after several years had decided she wanted to start dating and she figured i can't get pregnant so i don't need to insist on a condom and she got chlamydia and her doctor said understand folks this is paraphrased from the woman who is paraphrasing from I don't know how long ago this happened but the doctor was basically well if you're gonna whore around this is what's gonna happen and I think it was

validating for her the intake of breath from everybody sitting in the room when she said that story and like the anger that we were all starting to feel towards the doctor and I was really proud of her for sharing that information but when I talked to her after because I absolutely hunted her down afterwards to have a conversation she she didn't feel like she could confront the doctor and so she wound up just having to find another one and she was lucky enough that she could in the area she was living but that shame and the the new doctor she's working with was apparently fantastic but the shame like a doctor saying that to someone yeah instead of saying oh go ahead no no no go I think it's important you know that may not have been a direct quote but that's what she

heard that's right yeah that's what she heard yeah and instead of saying hey I you know I'm not sure if you're not using condoms or if you don't know how to or you don't know where to buy them or if you don't know that they are still important even though you're not postmenopausal there's so much education that could have happened there and that's that's not at all what happened and while it's been a horribly upsetting story to repeat it's also a great opportunity to talk about that bias um and i don't think she's the only one who's actually i think it's happened to women of all ages um but i think it's it's not a unique story for folks who are older and are trying to figure out how do you have a sex life when you're with a new partner in your 60s 70s

80s and beyond yeah absolutely because at the bottom at the end of the day we are social creatures and we want connection and we want to feel special and we want to be involved and engaged um you know most of us do that that desire rarely ever subsides you know and I want to I want to caveat that you know I understand there can be traumas or reasons why you may withdraw but the majority of the population wants to stay engaged and wants to feel desired and wants to wear something that makes them feel good and want society to maybe see them if as they see themselves when they wear something that makes them feel extra special on a certain day yeah and and dating again if you haven't dated in a while when you're 65 and older it's weird in some ways and i mean

now it's like online dating even the seniors are online dating um but i remember i was working with a group of prostate cancer survivors, which was a fantastic group of men. And this guy goes, how do I date? I'm like, well, what do you mean? How do you date? And he's like, do I hold the door? Do I hold their chair? I heard you're not supposed to do that anymore. And I'm like, these are really sweet questions. And it depends on the person. Some people do not want doors held for them. Some people do. And that's a great chance to have communication. But if you're not even sure how to do that, how do you negotiate condom use? How do you ask about STI history. You didn't used to do that back in the day. That wasn't something we ever advocated

for. And so it may feel a little overwhelming. And if you're not even being asked questions about that by anyone in your life, healthcare workers, adult children, not that, well, actually, adult children can be a good resource if they choose to be. But yeah, so it can feel a little overwhelming in general. And then again, the whole, if I don't know what I don't know, how do i get information about it right right so adult children how do you like that flawless segue because we we knew we wanted so i know we've talked about this before but we kind of sketch out ahead of time what we're going to talk about and then we very rarely stick to it but i was just very much like we need to talk about adult children

adult children are some of the biggest barriers to older folks dating some of the biggest barriers and a lot of it is is is that the children haven't dealt with the loss now whether someone has lost their partner to death or divorce um you may be in your 60s 70s and 80s and want to date again and what we're finding is the adult children are like putting guilt in like well what why why why do you need this or are you trying to replace the missing parent so a lot of like what you don't you don't miss mom or dad whoever it may be or what you're just going to disrespect their memory and that guilt can be come so overwhelming that it can stop some folks from either being honest with their children or or stop dating completely because

they're they're they're meeting such pushback which for me watching it happen is kind of like don't you want your parents to be happy and maybe you need to examine your own issues about having your mother or father replaced in like is this really a replacing of memories or is this really just you haven't dealt with the loss like the fact that we're not okay with just supporting older folks trying to find happiness and connection like you were saying that connection it's well and it's not always about loss yeah it could just be you don't you see your parents as your parents and they are they are maybe infallible or they are not sexual beings and they don't you know um so it doesn't always have to be centered around loss yeah no and i'm glad you pointed that

out but we very rarely think of our parents as being sexual creatures i mean right right which Which is interesting because how else did you come into their life? Right. Unless it was in vitro or some other assisted ART. But yeah, that is one of the big barriers is we just assume that you stop being sexually active. Now, before the adult children get really cranky with me and leave me lots of hate messages, I want to say that we don't usually think of anyone that we care about in a sexual way if they're not our sexual partner. Like we don't think of our siblings and their sex lives. Like, it's very normal not to, oh, there's some thinking going on there.

I'm not sure. I think we acknowledge that our peers and our siblings are, like, it's that access piece. It is that default of who has access to sex and who do we think is okay to have access to it. And so I think that there is an acknowledgement that our friends, our siblings, our peers date, likely engage, we're not actively picturing them, you know, engaging in sex or whatever. But I think that we have an assumption that they are out there, you know, dating, engaging in some kind of sex play, probably if they're dating, because there are circles of friends that will talk about that. so i so i would say that we we are more ready we are it's easier to acknowledge people in your generation or around your age or younger engage you know engaging in in dating and sex yeah versus your parents your grandparents your

aunts your uncles yeah right all those older people yeah um yeah and i i think that i think the thing for me is if you are if you're an adult child who is somehow stepping in the way of your parent finding happiness instead of just stepping in the way like what are you doing to sit there and figure out what is it that's making me uncomfortable is it the idea of an older person having sex is it the idea of I don't think this is appropriate for you I know one of the pushbacks I get when I talk to when I talk to folks about this it's always like well I'm watching out for them. And I'm like, well, what? So you're having to ask you to? Well, that and so I always take it in a very different direction. Because usually what they mean is they're afraid that the an older

person is going to be preyed upon for some kind of like, take all your money or use you for something. And but I always take it a separate thing when they're like, well, I'm looking out for them. I'm like, oh, so great. So you're having an STI talk with them. And you're talking to them about condoms and the different type of lubes. And I just get this look like, well, no. And I'm I'm like, OK, so not like that. No, I'm not looking out for that. But it really often comes down to this idea that they're afraid of someone older being taken advantage of, which I can understand to some degree because scammers do, you know, they do like that population because they sometimes can be easy. But there's a way of being concerned without being overbearing.

And there's a way of being concerned without stopping them from being able to find relationships that make them happy. And I think that's the thing that we need to check those older, those, those adult children and see kind of that impact they're having. I, I would echo that. That is exactly the time to have a taboo conversation with your parent, you know, that is, it feels taboo that your parent or your aunt or your uncle or son, you know, someone older than you who you see as someone who raised you or influenced you being raised it's unpacking first unpack for yourself why maybe you are having an adverse reaction to them getting back in the

dating world or or what have you and then have a conversation with them you know engage with them and ask. Be curious and try and do it without judgment because nobody lives inside. You don't live inside their head, so you don't even know what judgment they're inflicting on themselves and the internal conversations they're having if they're reentering the dating world after the loss of a partner, divorce, death, or otherwise. So you don't know how much work they had to do to get to the point where they're putting themselves out there. So try and have some curiosity, some neutral curiosity, so that they know that you can be a support system if they're struggling, especially to your point earlier where adult children can be a resource for some of this

education if they don't feel comfortable yet talking about it with their healthcare provider or someone in that space, we can be a resource to knock down a little bit of that taboo for them and for ourselves so that they become more and more comfortable engaging in those conversations and the spaces that can keep them safe and healthy. Yeah. And I think about this a lot with if you think about how much sex has changed, not that sex has changed, but how many things of sexual health have changed since they may have been dating before so if they're in their 60s 70s coming out of a 40 30 year relationship um syphilis is back it was it was kind of missing for a while syphilis is back we have new condoms on the market we have the term internal and

external condom which we used to call female and male condom but we don't we don't gender condoms anymore um there's way more types of lube that are out there um and i think that could be awkward Like I'm trying to imagine sitting down with my parents. Sorry if you're listening, dad. And having this conversation with my dad about like different types of lube. And I feel like it would be super awkward for me. And this is what I do for a living. But if if they're not having that conversation with me and I'm well versed in it, like where are they getting that information if they need it? So I think that it could be a great way of helping them decipher information. And maybe you don't feel comfortable going lube shopping with them, but maybe you can help them figure out what a good website is or how to submit a question to me about this. And I'd be happy to answer it. But for some folks, and I think this may have come up in a previous conversation, they're not doing their own grocery shopping. Does it sound familiar to you? It does. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about people in assisted living facilities. Right. So if I'm older and one of my kids or my niece or my nephew is taking me shopping, I need for it to be okay to either go to the condo and lube aisle and get that myself or have them pick it up for me. And so it's not like we're asking you to sit down and demonstrate positions for folks as they get older, though. That's your jam. Great. Good for you. But it could just being a resource. I was helping. I did a whole workshop once for seniors about how to create an online dating profile. which was so much fun but the they have been terrified into not giving out any personal data

anywhere anytime which i think is great like that's a good thing we're teaching them because we hear about people who are like giving out way too much information what they're creating a dating profile like well i don't want to put my name i'm like well you just you can just put your first name or your preferred name and they're like no i'm not supposed to give out any information i'm like but but it's a dating profile you have to do a little bit of information um so helping them learn about how to be safe online you know maybe I'm not teaching them lots of sex stuff but I can still help older generations figure out how to be safe online figuring out how to make connection because we talked about this when we did the circles of sexuality that a lot of times that

intimacy that emotional intimacy that we want doesn't have to come from a partner how do I meet I hear this from people across the lifespan like how do you meet people yeah you already know anyone in your social group like how do you meet people maybe we teach them how to use some of the apps that are out there about just meeting up with people who have similar interests um so that they don't feel disconnected and maybe they're not looking for love right now but they're looking for companionship but that i mean we're hearing that from everybody it's a challenge how do i meet new people so there's lots of ways that adult children can be helpful Even if it's not specific sex related, it could be about teaching them how to be safe online or how to make connections or introducing them to other places that they can meet folks.

Yeah, it's really becoming that safe space for your parent or your aunt, uncle, grandparent. Yeah. Because each generation as technology develops, it's fast and furious and it's only getting faster. so you know you you can you as an adult child or a young adult child can really be helpful because you're the expert in the technology space um for how to protect your you know teach your parents how to protect themselves and look for flags in online communication so that they don't get taken advantage of um so you don't have an entire financial mess to help them clean up you know there are horror stories like that that make the headlines all the time so yeah and i

think that that may be a more comfortable way of engaging with the topic but one of the things i always talk to parents about when they're because one of the questions i get a lot of is how do i have the sex talk with my kid my younger kid and I'm always like well you don't have a talk that's part of the problem you have a series of talks but we'll get to that I'm sure in another episode but when you demonstrate to your parents that you are adult enough and mature enough to have conversations about things that may be uncomfortable it means that they are more likely to come to you when they have concerns so maybe they're on a new medication and it's affecting them sexually and they don't know what to do if if you've made it so that mom and dad can come talk to you and say

I don't I don't know what's happening and maybe you don't need the details but it's like hey this medication isn't playing well with me I don't know what to do maybe you can then connect them back to their prescribing physician or to the pharmacist but if they don't feel like they can ask a question of you because every time something comes up you get a little weird Or you put your fingers in your ears and go, la, la, la, la, la, la. Yes, which I've seen people in their 40s and 50s do when we talk about sex and aging. But yeah, if you're a resource, maybe you start by teaching them how to be safe online. Maybe you start by teaching them how to use a patient portal.

But when they realize that it's hard for parents to watch their kids grow up. And when you're a functional adult and your parents still see you as this little kid, it can be really hard. But when you start showing that you can help them, they may be coming to you with things that they don't know where else to go to. And again, we don't expect you to have the answer. And if this is not a lift that maybe there are some boundaries that you needed to instill with your parents as an adult child with them, we're not suggesting that you break those or anything like that. with this kind of advice, I think we're assuming a relatively healthy parent-child relationship. Yeah. Yeah. One of the really big things when it comes to sexual functioning, well, really across the lifespan, but especially for older adults, are a lot of the medications

that they're on. A lot of those medications can have impacts on sexual functioning. So it's not like a parent got put on a new medication and they're having problems functioning the way they were they're going to come to you and say oh this is happening how do i fix it they could just be like hey i'm having a weird medication issue what do i do and you could be you know that's where they hey like let's go on to the patient portal and here's how you do that and here's how you send a question we don't we don't expect you to be the primary sex educator of your parents though be cool if that relationship existed but i'm also that's my job like hire me to do it that's maybe stuff i do be the the traffic director yeah right for their question you know i

i don't feel comfortable answering that mom dad aunt uncle grand grandma grandpa um but i know a resource that might that might be a good place to start yeah but i do think it's important that we keep in mind like you were saying that connection is so important um and that we're we're allowing people to find that connection however it might be and it may also not be sexually yeah you know they may just want that companion um and you know they're like i'm kind of over the sex piece or like so many medical issues or that's just not my focus which i would then argue like to back that definition of sex out um and redefine it for that person but i think that connection piece is really important and we need to acknowledge it um and i know we're getting

to about that point where we were on a wrap up. But I do, can I tell the story that I was telling you about the older couple? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's an interesting anecdote to begin wrapping up on. So I had been telling Charlie a story that I had been called in to help with an issue. It was at a, it was, it was, it was an organization that works with older adults. And it's like one of these long-term community, you know, retirement communities, but a little more assisted care than just living on your own and they had this adorable couple they were in their late 70s 80 early 80s and they were dating which is fantastic and they wanted to have sex but they weren't married and for them that was important they did not believe

in sex outside of marriage but they were also cognizant of the fact that if they got married there would be financial repercussions with things like social security and benefits and there was some pressure on the kids who were like oh they're after your money a lot of times when i hear that i feel like the kids are like they're stealing my money but that's a whole nother episode that's a different kind of podcast yeah um but but after having some communication with the folks who work with them i'm sad i never i saw photos i never actually got to meet the couple what they decided to do was they had a religious ceremony but not a civil ceremony so in the eyes of their god they were married and it was okay for them to have sex but in the eyes of the state

they were not legally joined together but sometimes it takes some out of the box thinking about how do we meet needs of people and i just don't i don't want us stopping to i don't want us not thinking about that as people age and just you don't have that conversation about how do we serve the people who connected with me were fantastic that they were willing to have these conversations but we We need to make sure we're doing that and that we're not forgetting that people have these needs, that these needs even exist. And we may just have to address them a little bit differently as people age. Yeah, I think an important point there is whatever role you have when you're dealing

with older generations engaging in sex and relationships is try and put your filter aside as much as possible because it's not about you. If you are in a space to support them or give them resources, um, don't, don't become a barrier or, um, an un, an unnecessary obstacle because of your perception of them. Well said. Thank you. So on that note, uh, we hope that this was, uh, informative and we want to thank you all for joining us on Unzipping Taboos today with me, Charlie, and our illustrious Dr. Sue.

We hope today's episode sparked new thoughts and can open up dialogues worth having, especially around sex and aging with people that you care about. Remember, your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. so if you enjoyed the show don't forget to subscribe leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear this and if you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into reach out to us via the link in the episode description we want to give a special shout out to ali o'brien for incredible theme music thank you so much ali and until next time keep the conversation going and keep on zipping those taboos take care everyone

© transcript Emily Beynon